4/30/2014

Last evening, in McAlester, Oklahoma, a black man who committed a truly heinous crime was tortured to death by the state. No one is going to shed many tears for Clayton Lockett, who shot a teenager and had her buried alive in 1999. But the question that needs to be asked here, loudly and clearly, of each and every citizen of Oklahoma, "Are you ok with the way Lockett was killed?" Because ultimately, governments being empowered by the people that they represent, the responsibility rests with each and every Oklahoman.

And if you're cool with the state injecting untested drugs into a man, causing him to violently convulse, call out things like "Mama, turn it off," and die of a heart attack after 43 minutes, if that doesn't make you at least wince, well, then perhaps the evil you perceive in this world is looking right back at you in the mirror.

Capital punishment is one of the most blatant examples of racism in action in this country, racism with real consequences for disempowered people. Yes, whites do get executed, but the history of the death penalty is one that is filled disproportionately with the state-sanctioned murder of black people.

What does this have to do with L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling and the tapes of his virulent, awful, racist statements to his mistress about her posting photos of her and black people on Instagram? Go with the Rude Pundit on this:

1. Donald Sterling was a racist cocksucker for years. No one called for his head for any of those statements and actions. Indeed, he atoned for his behavior (or covered it up) by giving shit tons of money (he's a billionaire, so it meant squat to him) to the NAACP. ESPN's Bomani Jones sounded the alarm back in 2006 and no one gave a shit.

2. And that's because Sterling's earlier actions were affecting powerless non-whites. This time around, he was fucking with rich black guys. He may hate all African Americans, but it's a fuck of a lot easier when people without pockets are your target. The outrage is because people who could make noise and be heard made noise. Where the fuck were they before now?

3. What happened is that Sterling's hatefulness could no longer be ignored because he posed a threat to the wallets of people with money. That's it. That's the only reason any of this is as huge as it is: because it fucked with rich people.

4. To return to Bomani Jones, he went on an extended rant about Sterling on The Dan Le Batard Show where he laid it out there: "This is the only opportunity people will have within their souls and within their psyches to stand against racism. 'Cause it's so easy to do it on this right here. It's so scandalous...So everybody's saying, 'This is my chance to speak down on racism.' When the next time comes and it's real racism and it's me and you just talking about it and the rest of them are being silent, that's when you get to pop up and say, 'Well, wait. I said something about Donald Sterling.'"

5. And Jones goes on to talk about housing discrimination in Chicago and how that has led to all of the violence occurring in that city, including the murder of a friend of his. Housing discrimination is something that Sterling engaged in that is far, far worse and far, far more racist than saying he didn't want his woman seen with black people. (Really, you have to listen to Jones. It's goddamn amazing.)

6. Sterling's words ain't shit compared to what he and his ilk have done to fuck things up in the United States. No one gave a fuck about his actions. If that tape hadn't been made, Sterling would have gone right on doing what he wanted. Fuck, it still won't matter, even if he loses the team. There's barely been a dust speck put on his armor made of billions of dollars.

7. The energy that has been put into the Sterling situation, the time spent covering it, debating it, all of it, will never be spent on Clayton Lockett and what the citizens of a state in this nation did to him. And it matters so much more than Donald Sterling that perhaps it's too much to get our heads around.

It's just easier for most people to point at the old, wealthy, white dude and say, "Racist" while ignoring the institutional racism that pollutes our nation.

4/29/2014

The Rude Pundit clicked on the Fox "news" article and thought, "Ah. Of course. We're done with Obamacare, so, yes, once again, to the talking points." For there was the Benghazi Trio of Senators Kelly Ayotte, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain demanding answers, goddamnit, on the obvious scandal of then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice going on Sunday morning talk shows and saying something that wasn't the entire story. Obviously, she must be called to account because you all remember how, based on Susan Rice's lies, we went to war with Lebanon, right? (It's a sign of how far down the shit-slickened rabbit hole the audience for Fox "news" has slipped that the article doesn't even explain what "Benghazi" is; it's just shorthand for "evil.")

And while the awfullest thing that ends in -azi in 70 years is most certainly going to bring down the Obama administration, destroy the presidential ambitions of Hillary Clinton, and put Ted Cruz in the Oval Office, it's not enough for your nutzoid conservatives. Because, dear Republican members of Congress, if you're not trying to repeal Obamacare, you may as well be offering up your ass to the President for rough fucking. There's a big damn contingent on the right that's losing its goddamn mind over the GOP shift away from repeal to "fixing it." And, if they have anything to say about it, there's gonna be hell-and-a-half to pay.

For instance, over at that center of fascist bloggery, Red State, Daniel Horowitz says it flat out in the title of a post: "They Lied to Us." How? "Republicans are now admitting they lied to us. They never had any intention to fight for full repeal of Obamacare. Now that the defund fight is behind us, they are admitting that they cannot repeal it. Over the past week, no less than John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers – prominent GOP leaders who opposed the defund effort – have come out of the closet to imply, in varying degrees, that full repeal is a thing of the past." And don't get him started on "amnesty" or, you know, "immigration reform" in the real world. More lies. More betrayal.

Red State's mighty leader, Erick "Erick" Erickson, the Fox "news" "analyst" and Limbaugh sub (as in "substitute host," not "submissive," although...), says it's time to fuck up the GOP establishment and put some real crazies in there: "The only way to change the direction of the country is to change the direction of the GOP. The only way to change the direction of the GOP is to unleash hell in Republican primaries." Unleash hell, motherfuckers. Like getting Ben Sasse elected in Nebraska. Sasse is running for Senate, and he's been accused of not hating Obamacare enough, something he has his little girls answer in a truly, epically creepy campaign ad.

"If you want to change America, you must change the Republican Party," Erickson writes Erickly. "To change the Republican Party, you must support men like [candidates you'll never hear about again]. They need your prayers, help, commitment, and vote." As a Democrat, the Rude Pundit can only say, "Yes, Republicans. Please go out and vote for the cranks and weirdos and shit-scrawlers. They'll do just fine in the general elections."

Over at the conservative latrine known as Townhall, some guy named Guy Benson is actually reasonable about the reality of repeal: "From an objective standpoint, it is simply a fact that Obamacare -- or whatever current permutation of the law may count as 'Obamacare' on any given day -- will remain the law of the land until at least 2017. Even then, repealing the law will require a Republican president and a Republican Congress, with members willing to use hardball legislative tactics such as reconciliation to peel it back." That ain't gonna happen, even after the 2016 election, says Benson. "Merely taking note of these factors and planning accordingly isn't 'selling out.' It's grappling with reality as it exists, not as one wishes it would be, so spare me the 'they lied!' histrionics."

Yes, the GOP civil war is gonna be fun, as the pragmatists and the dreamers fight, as the factions break into smaller factions. But never fear. Over in the corner, the embracing arms of Benghazi await. That's the place where everyone on the right feels loved.

4/28/2014

The annual convention of the National Rifle Association this past weekend in Indianapolis was the usual Fellini-esque freak parade of intellectual dwarves, geeks, and cripples. It featured Pasolini-esque wallows in sadism, like dominatrix Sarah Palin, with a small, silver vibrator set on "Ultragasm" running in her snatch, let the world know that no one's got as big a swinging dick as she does, supporting waterboarding and guns in schools, condemning, oh, shit, yeah, right there, "clownish, 'Kumbaya'-humming, fairytale-inhaling" liberals. This is not to mention the Argento-esque hellscape that Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's chief executive, painted with virgin blood, a place where only the nobly beweaponed can survive.

Also the convention featured the debut of a new ad for the NRA titled, "Do you still believe in the good guys?", a question that seems like a dare. The blatant troll bait features three people - let's call the white dude "Bearded Bear," the black dude "Safe Negro," and the white chick "School Secretary." The ad is filled with the boring-ass blather you've come to expect: There's bad people who want to rape your face while burning the Constitution. But here's some good people who want to make everyone into good goodniks with some tough love and guns, motherfuckers, guns. Which side are you on?

And then we get to the line. Safe Negro says, "It takes a special kind of backbone to reject the world that surrounds you." Then Bearded Bear says, "To sign your name where everyone can see it."

That last phrase there made the Rude Pundit sit up and look around the empty room to ask if everyone heard what he just heard. An NRA ad saying that you're a pussy if you don't let people know what you stand for?

So there it is, as plain as the screen you're reading this on. The NRA just told everyone to believe in something that they themselves do not believe at all. Really, Wayne? Really, Bearded Bear? "Sign your name where everyone can see it"?

See, the Rude Pundit seems to remember that, right after the Supreme Court's 2009 democracy-murdering Citizens United decision, part of which allowed political groups keep their donor names secret, Democrats tried to pass the DISCLOSE Act, which would have created at least some minimal disclosure about who is buying elections. One of the biggest opponents was the NRA, which feared all kinds of crazy shit, like that it would have to turn over member lists to the government and, more importantly, "disclose top donors on political advertisements."

But wait, one might think. Shouldn't you "sign your name where everyone can see it"? By its own words, the NRA is an organization that is financed by cowards, people who without backbone to say it's them. It is merely a shill for gun manufacturers. It's a giant con game that exists to enrich a few people while demanding worshipful obeisance from politicians and members. What that line in the ad demands is that you, good, loyal NRA card-carrier, you should go out there and proselytize for the gun cult. You should put your name out there so that, say, the Walton family and Chinese gun factory owners, perhaps, don't have to.

The culture war the NRA says it wants is just a cover for a power-grabbing sham and a means to make sure that Wayne LaPierre gets the best combovers in the business. The fact that the organization can so nakedly lie means, of course, that it knows its members just don't care.

4/25/2014

The Rude Pundit receives messages here and there, not as many as you'd think because of his firm "not giving a shit" policy. Most of them are along the lines of "Fuck you, you fucking Obama cock-lamprey" or invitations to leave the United States for another country. Generally, they're not that articulate. But then you get something that tells you about the good goodness being done by someone who takes the time to read this not-so-humble blog, and, well, that deserves a nod on a sunny Friday.

Kristina DeVries is a Florida progressive who started a private Facebook page where other progressives, some in red states themselves, could safely say mean things about conservatives without the trolls and douches chiming in. She calls it "The Blue Room" (not named after the play where Nicole Kidman got naked a few years back). It grew in two years from seven to nearly 600 members, and those dedicated liberals are having a second anniversary meet-up in Chicago tomorrow.

Let's let DeVries' friend Cindy Reed take it from here: "DeVries, who is solely responsible for bringing these like-minded folks together, is traveling from Florida to Chicago for a party we have planned in celebration of our anniversary. Not only has she provided us a safe place to post and vent, we have all been inspired to put our money where our mouths are, and either donate to the progressive cause, or to actually put boots on the ground. Several of us proudly worked on election campaigns, both state and federal, across the country. We have become a family, of sorts. Miles separate us, but ideology doesn't. Personally, I've found that I have closer relationships to these folks than I do with people I've actually met in 'the real world.' We run the gamut of race, economic and social position. And we all transcend these classifications because of this one woman."

The Rude Pundit appreciates the ever-loving fuck out of people who walk the walk, and DeVries does so, again and again: "She raised $1500 in 4 hours for an uninsured members cancer screening. The excess of that fund was donated to a battered women's shelter." That kicks so much ass that her feet can't find enough asses to kick. The work of people who are perhaps under the radar is what keeps all of us sane and connected to our humanity.

So this is a big ol "Thanks" and a potentially uncomfortably long hug to Kristina DeVries. If you make the world a better, safer place for even a few people, you've simply made the world a better place. The Rude Pundit will shoot some whiskey in your honor.

4/24/2014

The Supreme Court's decision in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action was ignorant and racist. It was made by ignorant and racist men (including putative African-American Clarence Thomas) for the most ignorant and racist of reasons: the belief that minorities do not need protections that guarantee their full participation in the supposed fruits of an alleged democracy.

If you believe that's true, if you agree with the majority, the Rude Pundit has a ranch he'd like to sell you.

See, last night, Adam Nagourney simply quoted what was said publicly by Cliven Bundy, the cattle owner who refused to pay the fines for letting his bovines eat the shitty sagebrush on federally-protected land and provoked a showdown with the Bureau of Land Management. In a press conference that he his-ole-self called, Bundy started, "I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro," a sentence that can never be followed by anything good.

You've probably read the quote already, but here ya go because, in the context of the deification of Bundy in the pantheon of American dissenters, it's just fucking hilarious: [Black people] "abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom." You got that? The right-wing's newest hero was musing that black Americans would have more freedom as slaves. Honestly, if the Rude Pundit had written a caricature of a conservative fucknut saying those words, he'd've deleted them for being too absurd for anyone with breath and a brain to speak aloud to the press.

Obviously, this has led to crawfishing like crazy from some politicians who had fluffed up Bundy and his "cause" (which, to be clear, was that he didn't want to pay a debt that he's owed for 20 years). It also led to the inevitable "let's parse the difference between Bundy's racism and his cause" bullshit.

The amendment to Michigan's constitution that was voted for by the majority of people in Michigan and that the Supreme Court upheld was called, no shit, the "Michigan Civil Rights Initiative." It said that no government entity within the state of Michigan - city, county, state, university - can "discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting." No affirmative action, no minority set-asides, nothing.

One more part of it is just a twist of the shiv for underrepresented groups: "Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as prohibiting bona fide qualifications based on sex that are reasonably necessary to the normal operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting." What that says, it seems, is that a fire department might be able to say, "Yeah, we won't hire women because they can't lift this air tank." And, well, shit, what can a woman do? Sue? But the state constitution makes that treatment legal.

The SCOTUS decision itself, written by Justice Kennedy, is the usual milquetoast bullshit that racists will say in order to justify their racism as being about anything but racism. Justice Scalia wrote his usual dickish concurrence, joined by his loyal manservant, Clarence Thomas. They wrote that, in essence, hey, if the people of a state want to say that racial discrimination is a thing of the past, who are we to stop them?

It was left to Justice Sotomayor to bitch slap the court and the nation. After detailing how, no, fuck you, there's still discrimination that needs the courts to intervene on, she threw down some knowledge on the Constitution and majority rule: "Under our Constitution, majority rule is not without limit. Our system of government is predicated on an equilibrium between the notion that a majority of citizens may determine governmental policy through legislation enacted by their elected representatives, and the overriding principle that there are nonetheless some things the Constitution forbids even a majority of citizens to do...We often think of equal protection as a guarantee that the government will apply the law in an equal fashion — that it will not intentionally discriminate against minority groups. But equal protection of the laws means more than that; it also secures the right of all citizens to participate meaningfully and equally in the process through which laws are created."

She went on like a fiery preacher: "Race matters. Race matters in part because of the long history of racial minorities' being denied access to the political process...Race also matters because of persistent racial inequality in society — inequality that cannot be ignored and that has produced stark socioeconomic disparities...And race matters for reasons that really are only skin deep, that cannot be discussed any other way, and that cannot be wished away. Race matters to a young man's view of society when he spends his teenage years watching others tense up as he passes, no matter the neighborhood where he grew up. Race matters to a young woman's sense of self when she states her hometown, and then is pressed, 'No, where are you really from?', regardless of how many generations her family has been in the country. Race matters to a young person addressed by a stranger in a foreign language, which he does not understand because only English was spoken at home. Race matters because of the slights, the snickers, the silent judgments that reinforce that most crippling of thoughts: 'I do not belong here.'"

Great words. Great dissent. It will be remembered long after everything John Roberts ever scribbled is forgotten. But it was still the losing side.

Cliven Bundy said aloud what many that rush to his cause are thinking. And the Supreme Court this week justified their beliefs in as stark a way as possible.

4/23/2014

Every now and then, the Rude Pundit has to take out his professorin' card and play it, usually when some right-wing scumfucker forces a college instructor to toe the conservative line. Today is one of those days.

Brent Terry is a part-time adjunct professor in the English Department of Eastern Connecticut State University. In case you don't know, "adjunct instructor" is the lowest rung possible in the hierarchy of academia. Everyone from the maintenance staff to the Associate Provost's ball washer has more job security. Part-time adjuncts are treated as disposable at best, as indentured servants at worst. They are professors who are trying to cobble together a living from benefit-free teaching gigs, often at more than one college in the area. They are paid shitty wages, and, generally, they teach most of the classes at many colleges since they cover the basic ones every student must take. Except in rare cases where they have some union representation, they have no power and must hope that there are classes available on a semester-by-semester basis. Surely, there are crack whores in an alley, blowing their tenth scabby cock of the night, thinking, "Well, this is better than being an adjunct."

But, apparently, Prof. Terry was good at his job. His comments and ratings at Rate My Professor were pretty damn positive prior to this week. "Before his class I hated poetry and I now have a respect for it," wrote one student. "Terry is a little out there but overall he's a really nice guy, who really loves his poetry!" said another. It's that "little out there" that ended up pissing off one brave Republican student.

In an Introduction to Creative Writing course, Terry went on a calm, reasonable, and absolutely biased tangent on how "racist, misogynists, money-grubbing people have so much power over the rest of us. And want things to go back not to 1955 but to 1855. There are a lot of people out there that do not want black people to vote, do not want Latinos to vote, do not want old people to vote or young people to vote. Because generally people like you are liberals."

This was recorded by conservative student Jayson Veley, who obviously turned it over to Campus Reform, the clearing house for pathetic whiners who can't stand to have any ideas but their own informing the opinions of the precious, delicate angels who are in college. This led to a Fox "news" hategasm, of course, of course.

First, the editor-in-chief of Campus Reform, Jebediah Fuckagoat or something like that, got to go on Greta Van Susterenenenen's show and say things like, "[T]his is creating an atmosphere for conservatives in the classroom where they are feeling -- this is why the student that released this video, this audio, is remaining anonymous. How is he going to be treated to come out as a conservative in an atmosphere where he is called a racist?"

So what intrepid reporter found out that the anonymous recorder was the aforementioned Mr. Veley? Oh, wait. It was Jason Veley himself, who was so afraid of being known that he went on Megyn Kelly's Parade of Shit What I'll Sneer At. Obviously, Veley was there to reveal what a madman Prof. Terry was, just abusing students in a completely inappropriate rant. Except the second that Veley said, "He was talking about this poem that was themed and centered around the ideas of racial inequality," whatever little point Veley and Fuckagoat and Fox wanted to make was over because what Terry said had to do with what they read in class. That's it. Issue done. Academic freedom ain't pretty.

Veley said that he confronted Terry and that the professor refused to back down or apologize. "Really, he just argued with me," he told Kelly. So because he couldn't get his teacher to bow down to his ideology, Veley felt he had no choice but to "go to the media."

And then the minority leader of the Connecticut House, Republican Larry Cafero, took to the floor of statehouse to demand an apology from Terry. "I would hope upon reflection that Professor Terry would have the decency to apologize to his class and apologize to the state university that employs him and frankly, apologize to all citizens of the state of Connecticut for his inappropriate comment," Cafero said in his three-and-a-half minute speech that was totally not grandstanding for the media. The head of the state GOP piled on, calling what Terry said "indoctrination" and that the governor should investigate the "clear abuse of a taxpayer-funded position." Because, clearly, Cafero was not abusing his taxpayer-funded position.

The Rude Pundit's said it before and he'll say it again, dear, dumb college students who believe you should go through life only hearing what Fox "news" tells you: unless your professor gives you a shitty grade because of your political beliefs, your complaints are meaningless. In fact, they are antithetical to the idea of a university education. Argue with your professor. Get others into it. You'll probably just come to a draw. But there's a chance that you might, oh, fuck, what do call it, learn something.

Oh, and the recording of Terry that Veley made contains this from the professor: "That's where creative writing meets up with the real world." Yeah, Terry explains explicitly why he's saying what he's saying, that it's the job of creative writers and good readers to see what's the thought behind what people and characters and authors express. "Even if you never write another story and another poem after this class," he tells them, "that's what you've learned." The Rude Pundit's been at this a long-ass time. He's observed teachers, critiqued teachers, and hired teachers. That's good teaching.

So Terry ended up apologizing because he's an adjunct and what the fuck else was he gonna do? If he'd had tenure, he could have told everyone to kiss his happy ass.

But the dogs of the right are out there, sniffing blood on the street. Now on Terry's Rate My Professor page, people who have never taken a class with him are saying shit like "Some University Professors need to be Banished from the US for their crimes Terrorism Being taught here in American Schools" [sic]. (That's probably been deleted by the site by now.) We'll go through the usual round of the nutzoids bemoaning the "liberal bias" in the liberal arts (while no one seems to complain about the conservatives and Friedmanites running around the Business departments).

And it will all just go to making students more closed-minded, more myopic, and more likely to vote Republican.

(Note: The "scumfucker" mentioned at the top is not Veley. The Rude Pundit just feels sorry for him because he's gonna feel like an even bigger idiot in a few years when he realizes how wrong he was. The scumfuckers are the Campus Reform bastards and the Connecticut GOP. Oh, and Megyn Kelly.)

Update: As rude reader RJD points out, Veley can safely go fuck some scum. Yeah, it seems that this innocent, young student who was ear-raped by his commie professor is an aspiring right-wing talk radio host, a Hannity wannabe, who had appeared on Glenn Beck's hate vomit show in 2010. He calls his online show "The Junior Factor." Extra points: He wrote a column calling liberals "racists." So he was trying to destroy Terry in order to advance his career. And, thus, he can go fuck himself with his microphone.

4/22/2014

That up there is Cat Island in Louisiana, in a photo from a week ago, which is nearly four years after the Deepwater Horizon ejaculated oil all over the Gulf coast. It used to be a nesting ground for brown pelicans, a lush mangrove-covered island that looks, as Doug Meffert, Vice President of the of the National Audubon Society, said, as if there was a fire. There wasn't a fire.

Sure, there are areas of that have recovered from the spill that started in April, some mitigation by time, water temperature, natural bacteria. Indeed, some of the recovery has surprised scientists.

Of course, there's no telling what's going to happen in the future as the environment continues to adapt to its poisoning by the oil and by the chemicals used to clean up the oil. An environmental chemist at LSU said, "[T]he oil is still in the marsh and it stays buried there, and every time there’s a storm event, tropical storms, it’s going to move some of that oil that’s still in the offshore environment around, and it will resurface." Another scientist says that they're still not sure where a third of the oil is.

We should also take into account the studies that link the oil spill with heart deformities in big fish like tuna and amberjack, ones that, you know, are immensely profitable, overfished already in some areas, now fucked right in their guts. "We can now say with certainty that oil causes cardiotoxicity in fish," says another scientist. Of course, we know what science is worth when it comes to the environment in the United States on this Earth Day 2014.

It really is like BP squatted down just squatted down over the Gulf of Mexico and squirted out the kind of watery shits that you get after drinking a bottle of cheap whiskey and eating a ton of fried food, laughing at how huge a dump it was taking and merely saying, "Whoa, that stinks" when it was done. But at least it wiped, right?

Back on Cat Island, there's one other effect of the decimation of the vegetation there. See, the roots of the mangrove trees held the soil together and, without them, the island is eroding away quickly, destroying not just the nesting grounds of the pelicans, but a buffer between the mainland and storms, and, well, hell, probably oil spills, too.

By the way, here's what Cat Island looked like in July 2010, a couple of months after the spill began, but before the oil had had an impact, during that gut-wrenching period of wondering where it was going to hit.

4/21/2014

Here are the stupidest goddamn couple of sentences that the Rude Pundit's read in a while: "[A]s anyone who’s had children knows, there’s often nothing like the bond between mother and daughter when the first grandbaby is on the way. If we had to guess, we'd say that Hillary Clinton will be a tad less interested in running for president now that she's about to be a grandmother."

The "we" in this case is not a dimwit. It's Linda Feldmann, the longtime political reporter for the Christian Science Monitor. Yes, earlier in the same paragraph, she wonder if "Perhaps it’s sexist even to ask the question" as to how Chelsea Clinton's uterus providing room and board for a fetus for a few months will affect her mother's presidential ambition. She tries to excuse the question by saying that Bill and Hillary Clinton have said they want grandchildren, as if this means they wish to give up any identity other what's relative to what comes out of Chelsea's vagina. No matter the justification Feldmann gives, it's sexist.

In Washington Monthly, in an article titled, no shit, "Nana for President," Haley Sweetland Edwards offers, "She will also likely provoke a national water-cooler debate, as no male candidate would, over whether she is too involved in her grandchild’s life, or, more likely, not involved enough—'How can she have time to be a good grandmother,' people will ask, 'when she’s out running for president?'" That water cooler is more than likely going to be in the offices of media outlets, at Politico and Time, desperate for something else to talk about that will get hits at the website.

Because, see, out here, no one gives a sad rat fuck about it other than, hey, we wish Chelsea well (except for the assholes who don't).

Here's a recent history lesson: Mitt Romney announced that he was running for president for the first time in 2007. The press noted then, "He and his wife, Ann, high school sweethearts, have 5 children and 10 grandchildren." Hey, groovy. Now tell us about how Romneycare is just a terrible idea for the nation.

Mitt Romney more or less ran for president for the next five and a half years. During that time period, his sons and their wives brought into the family, in various ways, eight new grandchildren. Two of them were born, by way of a surrogate, in May 2012, in the heat of the campaign.

No one asked, at any point, if Mitt Romney might give up on his presidential ambitions because he wanted to spend more time with his litter of grandkids. Fuck, no one even asked in 2012 if Tagg Romney would do less on the campaign trail because he just got two new babies. No one asked because not only did no one care, but because everyone assumed that things would go on as normal because that's what the fuck people do, men, women, grand or otherwise. The only reason anyone is talking about this is because Hillary Clinton has lady parts. And, no matter how you wanna sputter, "But...no," it comes out sexist.

As Rebecca Traister put it in the New Republic, "I tried to look up how many presidents have been grandfathers while serving in office. It’s pretty hard to look up because no one in the history of presidents has ever cared about whether or not they have grandchildren or will ever have grandchildren because it is truly one of the dumbest things to care about in the universe." (Emphasis hers.)

But, well, shit, we live in stupid, stupid times where the press seems to take an active role in making us stupider. So no doubt we'll get the Chelsea truthers, people who believes the Clintons conspired to make sure Chelsea was pregnant in order to make Hillary more sympathetic during an election cycle. When it comes to the Clintons, there is no depth to which the right-wing media will not sink. They won't just scrape the bottom of the barrel; they'll get under the barrel in order to dig in the mud and shit there, coming up filth-encrusted and believing they've found gold.

Hillary Clinton was a lawyer, an active First Lady, a successful senator, a presidential candidate, and an intensely busy Secretary of State. Yeah, her only child is having the first grandchild. And?

If she decides not to run for president this time, it'll have more to do with being exhausted by the very bullshit that she's had to put up with for most of her adult life from debauched media whores looking for the next fake scandal to try to wreck her. It'd be hard to blame her.

4/18/2014

Being that Easter lands on 4/20 this year, it seems like a good excuse to talk about the marijuana. Apparently, it's being decriminalized and legalized all over the place, for medicinal, recreational, and sexual usage, and that's bad because it "only benefits drug peddlers." At least, that's what we're being told by the nutzoid evangelicals over at the Family Research Council (motto: "The only joint we smoke is made of Christ's flesh"). And we gotta pray on this shit because now Maryland, with its Democratic governor being all Democratic and shit, just decriminalized possession of a tiny amount of the demon ganja.

The call has gone out to the email inboxes of glory, and it's time for the Super-Duper Prayer Team to leap to its knees and into action. The Rude Pundit joined the FRC's SDPT a long damn time ago under a nom de rude so he could get the inside scoop on what all he needs to offer up the clasped-hand pray jobs to Jesus. Every week, he gets his directive to implore the Good, Loving Lord Who Is Filled with Wrath and Anger to fuck some shit up for various reasons, usually gays, abortions, or abortions by gays.

But this week, it's about legalization of pot, which is just spreading like a weed across the nation (get it? Stoner humor). Oh, sweet SDPT members, we gotta pray, "May state policies which encourage marijuana use, which serve as a gateway to more harmful drugs and addiction, and that benefit only drug peddlers, be reversed! May those in authority, especially parents, set an example and train our youth to reject mind altering drugs that are dangerous to everyone!" Colorado might argue that the sale of pot doesn't only help "drug peddlers," considering it's gonna benefit schools, especially.

Oh, and, hey, isn't marijuana a plant, created by God? Were we only supposed to admire its leaves? Make rope and itchy clothes with it? Perhaps a handy tote? Well, then, why did God make it so awesome to smoke? Why did God give it medicinal properties that help the sick and dying? That stop children from having seizures? Are we now questioning the ways of the Lord?

The Rude Pundit doesn't understand, and for SDPT members who need some guidance, the Prayer Target letter provides helpful verses straight from the Holy Bible itself. Like Luke 12:35-40, which says that servants need to be ready whenever their master needs them: "It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak." Were the servants getting baked? And what about the masters? Is it cool for them to toke? That one doesn't help.

What about another suggested reading, 1 Corinthians 6:12-20? Let's see here..."The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body." The hell? Does God want to fuck us? He'd at least need to buy the Rude Pundit dinner. Let's continue...something, something "prostitute." Aaand...oh, here: "Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body." So is this saying that if we get stoned, we'll end up fucking whores? Seems a roundabout way to imply something about marijuana. In fact, it quite specifically says that, if it's not the boning, we're good.

Okay, just one more: Ephesians 5:18. Maybe this will be more on the money: "Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit..." Well, there you go. The Bible says not to get drunk on wine, so you should avoid pot? Huh. That doesn't seem like a direct one-to-one relation there. And, mostly, the Bible has a problem with getting drunk, so is it okay to smoke a little weed, but not get too stupid?

This is all very confusing. The Rude Pundit needs to light up, clear his head, and pray in his own, special way.

4/17/2014

So Politico does a story on the Guardian and the Washington Post winning the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the documents and files taken by former National Security Agency contract employee Edward Snowden that revealed the extent of the NSA's gathering of heaping piles of yummy data on each and every one of us who uses electronics for communication. The article's author, Dylan Byers, quotes people who are angry about Snowden's whistleblowing. One of those is quoted is John Yoo, described as "a former deputy assistant attorney general and author of the 2002 memos advising the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques." The Rude Pundit has described him as "a piece of shit." One description does not negate the other, and, indeed, they seem to work well together.

As you might imagine, Yoo was not exactly thrilled. He said, "I’m not surprised the Pulitzer committee gave The Washington Post a prize for pursuing a sensationalist story, even when the story is a disaster for its own country...I don’t think we need automatically read the prize as a vindication for Snowden’s crimes." Huh, the Rude Pundit thought, if there's a man who knows something about abiding crimes that cause a disaster for our country, it's John Yoo. He's a dude who charmingly believes that the President has the right to order torture, even of children, if the President deems it necessary to protect the security of the United States, and he still supports the very program that "damaged the United States' global reputation."

As more and more is revealed, like that above quote, from the still-classified Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's "enhanced interrogation," or "torture" program, the likelihood is still that not only will no one ever be punished for, as one of the conclusions reads, "conditions of confinement for CIA detainees [that] were brutal and far worse than the agency communicated to policymakers" and for outright lying to Congress, but that the entire episode will be tossed onto the shitpile of historical blindness. Except as pages in some book about this shameful age, it will never be confronted, never be grappled with, only repressed like a secret desire for snuff porn, for getting off on the disembowelment of young boys (known as "Cheneying").

Remember: all the awful things that you've heard about, all those "techniques," like waterboarding, stress positions, extreme heat and cold, placement into cramped spaces, that that's the shit that was done by the CIA. That's the shit that was approved by government lawyers like John Yo and Alberto Gonzales, the shit that has memos written about it, the shit that George W. Bush's torture apologists like Marc Thiessen desperately justify so they keep the demons that claw at their consciences at bay. It leaves out the black sites, where the CIA sent detainees to be tortured off the books, in Syria, in Poland, on an island owned by Great Britain, at a secret hidden compartment of Guantanamo Bay, with beatings and electric shock and the usual array of horrors.

Our silence as a nation has allowed so much to continue. There's the joke trials at the still-open Gitmo detention center, where the FBI turned a defense attorney into a secret informant, creating a situation that veers from tragedy to farce in prosecuting people who might actually be responsible for the 9/11 attacks. And, yes, there's the Snowden documents, which reveal the gratuitous paranoia, a national mental illness, that we are forced to exist with.

Ultimately, our failure to demand a reckoning merely enables the continuation of the abuses. Yes, Barack Obama ended the torture program, but, fuck, if no one's going to the Hague for it, what's to stop another president from starting it back up? Obama himself feels he has broad discretion to spy. What kind of precedent has been set here?

Except for a few dissenting voices, almost all of this has been met with a collective shrug and a "Meh, what are you gonna do?" Our mass silence is our complicity. And the feeling that we truly can't do anything about it even if we wanted to is the supreme victory by the powerful to render us powerless.

4/16/2014

What the Rude Pundit understands about the just-concluded stand-off between the Bureau of Land Management and rancher Cliven Bundy and his merry band of other ranchers, children, and militia members, most of them armed, can be summed up in two pictures:

That's the assorted fucknuts, paranoiacs, and numbskulls gathered to defend Bundy's cows and their right to graze on protected federal land. (Some of the cows had been taken by the feds and held in pens.) They're also defending Bundy's desire not to pay the $1 million in fines he's been assessed for his 20 years of flouting the law. Bundy's just a crazed hick asshole, but he's a crazed hick asshole who hasn't given a shit about the law, spending more time losing in court than maybe campaigning for politicians who might change the laws (which is the way things are supposed to work). The land was protected to prevent the extinction of some species and to keep the habitat stable for wild horses. Fuck that, though. Bundy's cows liked free grass.

Of course, who gives a shit when a district court in Nevada ruled against Bundy and for the government, saying, "The public interest is best served by having the federal lands managed without the presence of trespassing cattle on lands that are closed to grazing. The public interest is also best served by removal of trespassing cattle that cause harm to natural and cultural resources or pose a threat to the health and safety of members of the public who use the federal lands for recreation. The court finds that the public interest is negatively affected by Bundy's continuing trespass."

Of course, the fucknuts, paranoiacs, and numbskulls all thought that this was an unconstitutional land grab or tyranny or the beginning of rancher death camps or whatever stupid shit Alex Jones and/or the voices in their damaged brains are telling them. Whatever it is, it requires a Second Amendment solution to keep their property rights that are given to them by God through the Constitution, which is exactly like Moses's tablets and not written by humans at all. Christ, the Rude Pundit is exhausted by simpleminded cocksuckers who wield the Constitution as if they actually understand anything other than a couple of the items they think are about them, like an asshole at a party who says he can play guitar but just strums the one or two chords he kind of knows.

The stand-off came to an end when the fucknuts et al blocked an interstate highway and got set up for the big armed battle (with the charming strategy of letting unarmed women get shot first because they thought that would gain them sympathy). The feds decided, "Oh, fuck it. Nobody needs to die over this literal bullshit. Release the cows." Bundy's son, who had been tasered by federal officers for kicking one of their dogs, declared victory and said, "The people have the power when they unite. The war has just begun." As some on the right have declared, you can view this as an act of civil disobedience over what gets to eat the grass, which is kind of sad, really. Still, you can imagine there was much hooting and hollering in celebration.

Which leads to photo number two:

That's what's left behind after the military drone missile bombs the living fuck out of some place in a desolate landscape, much like Nevada. "The war," if it ever came to that, would be over in a millisecond. But, no, please, lock and load, nutzoids.

The message to Bundy and his followers is simple: you are being indulged, like a child who threw himself on the floor of the Walmart, screaming because he just had to have that WWE action figure. And, frankly, when you start blockading roads and fucking up the land and pretending like you are anything more than a greedy motherfucker who doesn't want to pay his debts, it's hard to find sympathy.

4/15/2014

At a town hall meeting in Gainesville, Florida (motto: "The ugly part of the Sunshine State"), good, faithful Congressman Ted Yoho proudly announced that he's a fucking idiot. Yoho was answering a question on whether or not the severe weather that has affected Florida, which, despite its beaches, bars, and boobs, has a robust agriculture industry, might be related to climate change and, if so, "are scientists right" about its causes.

Yoho responded, "I think there’s an agenda-driven science. I can read stuff that says that the information was skewed. It’s not right. I’m a guy that’s worked out in the weather since I was 16. I can tell there’s climate change. The cause? I’m not smart enough for that." On one level, it's good to know that Yoho trusts his senses when it comes to the existence of climate change. However, if one is not "smart enough" to understand something, perhaps one should rely on the advice of people who, oh, fuck, what do you call it, study it, like, you know, scientists. (Let's not even get into the idea that climatologists might have an agenda but oil companies apparently don't, according to Yoho's "logic." Or the fact that, in this day of internet rubes crapping out whatever they want, you read pretty much any "stuff" you want, from climate change denialism to slash fiction involving Harry Potter, Severus Snape, and a sexy black griffin with a huge cock.)

That was Yoho's response to a lot of questions: shit's just hard. "Our tax system is so complicated and convoluted," he told the crowd during his 90 minute confession of his mental disabilities. But, hell, he knows Obamacare is bad. Probably because the bill is so long.

Most stunning was his confession that he's unsure about the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Asked about by an African-American constituent, Yoho babbled, "Is it constitutional, the Civil Rights Act? I wish I could answer that 100 percent. I know a lot of things that were passed are not constitutional, but I know it’s the law of the land." It's too bad that the United States doesn't have a body that decides the constitutionality of the laws passed by Congress, like a court or something. For 50 years, we've lived under a law that might not even be legal.

Well, except for that unanimous 1964 Supreme Court decision that specifically said that the Civil Rights Act was constitutional. You excise Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States from the historical record, and you've got an argument. So Yoho would be right to be doubtful if he wasn't entirely wrong.

But wisdom rests, as it always does, with the electorate. Let's conclude with the words of Evelyn Suznovich, retired, who said of her representative to DC, "I’m glad that we have somebody in Congress (who) uses his brain...He’s a critical thinker, (who) thinks things out well." Well, for Florida, Yoho might be as smart as it gets. That chill you just felt is a dumbass tripping on your gravestone.

By the way, Yoho spoke at Kanapaha Middle School. "Kanapaha" is a word for houses made of palm leaves in the language of the Timucua Indians. Yeah, they're extinct now, thanks to the diseases that white Europeans brought to the New (to them) World. The missionaries were more successful in spreading infections than spreading the word of God. Yeah, between that and forcing the natives into slave-like labor, it was the perfect setting for Yoho to say that we shouldn't treat people of different races as equals.

4/14/2014

Let us not fuck around here with terms like "hate crime" and "mass murder." Let us not be careful where we tread for fear of offending the delicate sensibilities of stupid people. Let's just call the shooting spree at two Jewish centers that ended with three people killed in Overland Park, Kansas, yesterday what it is. Frazier Glenn Cross, the shooter, committed an act of terrorism. He is affiliated with terrorist groups who seek to use violence to overthrow the current government of the United States. And the only reason that anyone would hedge on that is because they don't want to piss off the Tea Party and other right-wing fucknuts who believe that, because they don't wear hoods and robes, they aren't as derangedly racist as the local Grand Wizard of the KKK.

Cross (who also, charmingly, went by the name "Glenn Miller" - make your own rusty trombone joke) was a known white supremacist and kind of a pussy, arrested and convicted on weapons charges before narcing out fellow racists to the FBI. He had once run for Senate in 2010 as a write-in candidate in Missouri, and he produced anti-Jewish and race-baiting radio commercials that the local stations were forced to run because federal law allows you to be as much of a dick in public as you can afford.

A trip into Cross's website is a descent into a white rabbit's asshole, all noise and shit. It is filled with crazed ranting about Jews controlling everything: "The Jew-controlled entertainment media have taken the lead in persuading a whole generation that homosexuality is a normal and acceptable way of life; that there is nothing at all wrong with White women dating or marrying Black men, or with White men marrying Asian women; that all races are inherently equal in ability and character—except that the character of the White race is suspect because of a history of oppressing other races; and that any effort by Whites at racial self-preservation is reprehensible." Wow, we've been busy.

When you look at Cross's list of "My Political Goals," with a little bit of language changed, it reads like a teabagger's bizarro, fevered wet dream, the kind where you end up realizing that you've fucked the stuffing out of your pillow, but at least you made it your bitch. In between the bullshit about giving whites "back" everything that non-whites have taken from them or segregating prisons or giving equal time on the air to crazy fuckers, there's things like "To initiate laws that will mandate that American company executives who have relocated their companies to foreign countries to take advantage of cheap labor, at the expense of American workers, will either return those companies to the continental United States, or else lose their American citizenships, permanently," the kind of stuff where you think, "Huh. This motherfucker blames everyone for his shitty job. Too bad he couldn't focus his energy on just the right people."

But mostly this dude saw Jews manipulating all other people for their advantage, turning gentile white men into "cowards." He admonishes whites, "Despise the Jew parasites! Not the bodies, minds, and souls that these Jew parasites attach themselves to and suck the life's blood from their unsuspecting victims, draining their sap, strength and very will to resist." And he calls for "defense" to restore whites to total power against the ZOG (the Zionist Occupational Government aka the ideology of "I fuck myself with my own fist"). He also talks about how proud he is of the thousands of people who are part of the organizations he supports and has joined.

You can see it on the Vanguard News Network, an online clearinghouse for white supremacists to vomit out loudly and proudly (under mostly fake names) the bile that they used to have to keep to themselves or their little group of cross-burners meeting in the basement. Yeah, VNN already has a page up with people praising Cross. The Rude Pundit tries to avoid reposting online comments because there's only so much his soul can take before it finally just says, "Yeah, fuck you, man. I'm outta here" and leaves him a hollowed out husk. You can read it for yourself.

But if you like that sort of thing, you can get your rocks off on the blog Endzog, which has a "Frazer Glenn Miller Jr Tribute" to face rape you with a 12-minute video. Oh, and the blogger says, "Many of us would say it was too early to go in and we should wait for them to more publically [sic] kick-off their race war first, but he made his decision and White nationalists should not second guess it." Yes, let's all defend this guy's right to buy a bunch of guns without a background check.

The point here is that, in the wake of this incident and the Sikh temple shooting in 2012, the FBI should be wrecking these domestic groups. Federal law enforcement agencies trawl the internet, seeking people who blink in the direction of jihad so the pathetic fucks can be infiltrated and set-up to look like they're actually gonna blow up a bridge or some such shit. If the shooter had been Frazeer al-Cross, we'd be talking about nothing but terrorism.

Right now, you're more likely to be mowed down by an ignorant fuck with a rifle and a head full of conspiracy theories than you are to die in a suicide bombing at your local mall. But because that ignorant fuck is part of the Republican base, conservatives lose their shit if you suggest that we need to do more about those terrorist organizations.

By the way, let's hope someone informs Cross that he killed only one Jew, being that not many people stand around with hooked noses, counting money, so it was hard to get the right targets. The other two were white Christians, a doctor and his 14 year-old grandson. Chances are, he'll dismiss that as Jew propaganda.

Update: Turns out that Cross killed only non-Jews. So he's a complete and utter fucking failure at the one thing that he attempted to do. He sucked so badly as a race warrior that they probably won't even let him into the prison neo-Nazi gangs. Well, except as designated senior citizen spooge receptacle.

(Tip o' the hat to rude reader JG. His full name will not be used because it sounds Jewy, so he might be part of the ZOG. Oh, and tip o' the hat to SL, who informed the Rude Pundit what ZOG means.)

4/11/2014

Man, the GOP wanted Benghazi to be more than just another cocktease. To be sure, Benghazi was good at it, rubbing its scandal-tightened ass up against the GOP's groin until the GOP was aching with a desire to furiously fuck Benghazi. Goddamn, what a little slut Benghazi was, all whored out in a little skirt and see-through top with a red lacy bra under it. Just those lips, those tarted-up, red-lipsticked, dick-sucking lips, invited the GOP to get it up and get ready to stick it in. The GOP would watch Benghazi sashaying around, thong just visible, high-heeled. It's all the GOP could talk about, how it was gonna get to nail Benghazi's ass like it was an electromagnet and the GOP's dick was made of iron.

Alas, alas, though: Benghazi was an illusion, a fantasy concocted by a lonely GOP masturbating and weeping in a corner. Now, even its own friends are telling it that the time has come to give up the hope that the bitch-in-heat dream will come true.

Columnist and commentator Charles Krauthammer smacked that hard-on down on Fox "news" this week: "Politically speaking, the administration has won. They ran out the clock...If we had had a select committee from the beginning, really had coherent hearings, unlike what we’ve had,which were disjointed hearings that let all things sort of slip away, we really would have been somewhere, we would have gotten to the bottom of this. But, as a political fact, this thing is done."

What Krauthammer doesn't mention is that, except for the drooling hordes of the Republican base, the kind of people who think Louis Gohmert is a legitimate choice as a legislator, no one in the country gave a happy monkey fuck about "What Really Happened in Benghazi." Most people think, "That was something that sucked. Excuse me. I gotta pay some bills."

The Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Buck McKeon from California, declared as much yesterday: "I think I've pretty well been satisfied that given where the troops were, how quickly the thing all happened and how quickly it dissipated, we probably couldn't have done more than we did." In other words, "Can my committee work on other shit now, please?"

Oh, but even though he won't appoint a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attack, House Speaker John Boehner wants you to know he's still gonna get to the bottom of it: "And when it comes to Benghazi, we’ve got four Americans who are dead, and their families deserve the truth about what happened. And the administration refuses to tell them the truth."

Yeah, that's the thing about a self-destructive fuck fantasy. Some skeevy, old onanists just can't help themselves. They're gonna keep thinking the fantasy will walk up to them and say, "Oh, take me" even when the dream has left the building, gotten in the car, and driven away.

4/10/2014

Here's a couple of things the Rude Pundit read today that are bugging the shit out of him:

Over in South Carolina, some state legislators got all pissy when the University of South Carolina Upstate was gonna feature, at an LGBT studies event, a monologue play titledHow to Be a Lesbian in 10 Days or Less (which sounds like the greatest TED talk ever). It's by Leigh Hendrix and performed under her stage name, Butchy McDyke. USC Upstate had already been punished by the legislature, having $17,142 cut from its budget (along with $50,000 for the College of Charleston) because the innocent freshman were asked to read a book about a gay and lesbian radio show.

This time, after getting their marching orders from a conservative website, three legislators threatened more budget cuts. Said Sen. Kevin Bryant (guess what party), "If they’ve got extra money sitting around to promote perversion, obviously they’ve got more money than they really need." In a clear demonstration of why education in the humanities matters, another senator said the play was "recruitment" for college students to choose to be gay. Why should the state pay for such things? they demanded to know.

So the performance was cancelled because of freedom.

Over in Massachusetts, Brandeis University had planned to award writer and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali an honorary degree at the graduation ceremony. Ali is a controversial figure: she is unequivocally a supporter of rights for women and LGBT people. She is also unequivocally outspoken against the mistreatment of women around the world, including in Islamic nations and including Muslims in the United States and Europe. Ignoring her other stands (and that she is an atheist), she has been embraced by conservatives because she validates their Islamophobia, and, ignoring the work she has done on behalf of victims of genital mutilation and other violence, she has been attacked on the left for the same.

She said that "we are at war with Islam" and she has called the religion in which she was raised a "cult of death." What started as bloggers saying that Brandeis was wrong to honor her morphed into an online petition that got thousands of signatures, a letter signed by over 80 Brandeis faculty members, and excoriation from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, all calling on the invitation to be withdrawn. CAIR called her a "notorious Islamophobe," which is actually not a bad name for a rapper.

So the honorary degree was withdrawn because of freedom.

One thing you can bank on in this life is that you cannot go through the world without being offended. It ain't gonna happen. You're gonna go to a comedy show, and somebody is gonna say something that just hits you in the gut as wrong. You're gonna listen to the news or go on Twitter or read some blogs and someone is gonna say the exact shit that gets to you. Someone's gonna say a word, "cunt" or "nigger" or "fag," and someone is gonna get upset. Someone is going to give voice to beliefs that you find appalling. You will be offended, whether you're on the left or the right, whether you're an atheist or fundamentalist of one religion or another. If you exist in the world, you open yourself to offenses you need to deal with.

You know what else? You are gonna have to pay for shit that upsets you. The classroom where the Christian Prayer Circle for High School Virgins Who Are Hot for Jesus But No One Else meet for their weekly support group? You're paying for the electricity and heat. The drone missiles that are murdering people? You're paying. The public college that teaches a class in The Fucked Anus in Art and Literature? You're paying.

The Rude Pundit sees little difference between the outraged South Carolina lawmakers and the outraged Brandeis protesters. They are on the same side of the same filthy coin, which reads, "This person says things I don't like; therefore, no one should hear this person." You could add "Except for maybe in places and at times I approve." He finds such censorship of speech (and, please, don't fall back on the old "Well, we're not preventing them from speaking" canard - it's censorship) ludicrous across the ideological spectrum. You can't think the withdrawal of Hirsi Ali's invitation is okay, but South Carolina shouldn't pressure a college to cancel Butchy McDyke. That's laughable hypocrisy. That's saying it's wrong for one religion to be offended but okay for another one to be.

Of course, that means the Rude Pundit is offended. But he doesn't want people speaking out to shut up. He wants them to be heard, along with all the other voices. He wants more speech, more voices, more perspectives. You can see who shoots themselves in the foot only by giving them all the bullets they can handle.

4/09/2014

Let's put the Tale o' the Kissing Congressman in context here: Chances are that this is a hit job on a politician that beat Eric Cantor's chosen candidate. And Vance McAllister, the representative who was caught on camera smashing his face against the face of a woman not his wife, was actually the saner of the two running (and remember: that's relative - it's like saying that Grown Ups is a better film than Grown Ups 2). McAllister thought that Louisiana should accept Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act because it would help people in poverty, which is especially high in the 5th District. He was declared to be the more "moderate" candidate, as opposed to Tea Party nutzoid Neil Riser. When McAllister won, no less an authority than Joe Scarborough declared that it was "pretty special stuff" to have a "pragmatic" Republican win.

McAllister's district is from dead central up to northeast Louisiana, with the towns of Alexandria and Monroe in there. It's around where Steel Magnolias was supposedly set. It's more or less an appendage of Mississippi culturally, economically, politically, racially, and just about every -ly you can think of. Oh, and the Duck Dynasty family is from up there, too.

Yeah, they made ads for McAllister. One of 'em even was McAllister's in-yer-black-face-Obama guest at the State of the Union. The Robertsons haven't issued any formal statement or nailed a dead duck to the congressman's office door, but one of the bearded bastards told McAllister that it was a private matter and should be handled that way. And that'd be all fine except, of course, McAllister had to go and bring God and faith and family into the special election he won just last November:

That's McAllister with his gray-haired wife and five precious angels around the breakfast counter, getting ready for Sunday churchin'.

You wanna make this extra sleazy? McAllister and the other woman's husband knew each other for years. They worked together in the oil fields. More fun? Both Heath Peacock and his wife contributed, separately, the maximum allowable by law, $5200, to McAllister's campaign. One of them got special access to the congressman. The other got his heart broken. Hardly seems fair. And the woman, Melissa Peacock, had a job at McAllister's local office, where they were filmed, and just resigned over the kiss.

To get back to the first point here, a pastor in Monroe said that one of McAllister's staff members leaked the security footage from the building. Preacher Danny Chance (seriously, the names in this thing are like something out of a Raymond Chandler book) remarked, "I just feel like there is a conspiracy to bring Vance down and destroy him. For someone on his staff to do that is wrong." Spurned staffer? Tea Party conspiracy? Someone took the footage and leaked it to the press. It ain't a stretch to think in such ways.

That press, by the way, is the bugfuck insane conservative publisher of the Ouachita Citizen newspaper, Sam Hanna, Jr. He's a got a brain full of teabags and writes like a Fox "news" spouting robot. Of the President, Hanna wrote that we can't "trust anything the Obama administration says or does. Think about it. Think about the IRS scandal. Benghazi. Fast and Furious. Russia. The 'red line' in Syria."

The Rude Pundit's no fan of McAllister's. More "moderate" though he may be, he still believes appalling things. He fucked up. He was nailing a friend's wife while he himself was married after telling everyone how much he loves himself some GodJesus. Certainly, what's good for Anthony Weiner oughta be good for McAllister. (Although, you know, it's Louisiana. You can fuck hookers while wearing a diaper and still get reelected.)

But this is about more than one weak man with a voice like a brain-damaged cow. It's an escalation of the GOP's internal war, where being 98% purely conservative ain't enough. This might be a grab-the-popcorn moment as the right tries to purge the party of its even slightly-less-doctrinaire members.

4/08/2014

In our last episode, Attorney General Eric Holder caused Republican Rep. Louis Gohmert of Fuck-a-Mule, Texas, to descend into an ape-like rage, leaving him babbling, quite clearly, "The attorney general will not cast aspersions on my asparagus."

Today, Holder was back before the House Judiciary Committee and, after another dustup over Holder not providing documents that Gohmert demanded, Holder took out some asparagus and fucked Gohmert's ass with it. At the end of Gohmert's bluster, sounding like Yosemite Sam gargling balls, Holder said, really, "Good luck with your asparagus." Gohmert must have felt the bumpy tip of the spear tickling his prostate.

You have to imagine Holder was thinking, "Why the fuck not? You've already held me in contempt." It was the "Go fuck yourself" of the Month.

And it brightened the Rude Pundit's day more than a Buzzfeed full of pug puppy pictures.

4/07/2014

Oh, dear. Oh, no. Oh, our shining stars and lacy garters. A corporate chief and motherfucker gave money to the cause of preventing people from having equal rights, and, when people found out about it, they were pissed, so he had to resign or ruin the corporation. Honestly, fretting about some rich asshole who had to step down over his assholishness is a waste of time and energy. Is he still rich? Yeah? Then who the fuck cares.

What's hilarious and sickening at the same time is the line-up of shitheels and cumbuckets on the right who are so very upset because Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich was "hounded" out of his job for giving money to support Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage in California (for a bit).

Like, for instance, Newt Gingrich, who said on ABC's This Week, "This is just the most open, blatant example of the new fascism, which says if you don’t agree with us 100%, we have the right to punish you, unless you’re like Hillary [Clinton] and Barack Obama, and you recant." Asked if there was a line that Gingrich would draw, like opposition to interracial marriage, Brave Newt took a brave stand for free speech: "I think the question is do you want to live in an open and tolerant society, or do you want impose your views at the cost of people’s jobs?"

Indeed, Newt Gingrich. A free and open society where people don't lose their jobs. Hell, what do you want? A place where, as he said, "If you’re a young faculty member, in a lot of places, if you’re a young member of a news department, and you have the wrong views, meaning conservative, you have no career." Absolutely not. Faculty members, or anyone, who has the "wrong" views should not be fired for that, opined mighty Newt.

Unless, of course, those views piss off Newt Gingrich. At a 2005 speech at the American Enterprise Institute (motto: "Capitalism is awesome. Let's bomb shit"), the jolly fornicator commented on a radical professor, "Ward Churchill is a viciously anti-American demagogue. He has every right to free speech, and I support his free speech. We should give him free speech by not paying him." Now, let's grant some nuance. Gingrich thought that, as a professor at a public university, "taxpayers" should not fund his speech: "Taxpayers don't have to pay for lunatic professors to have a salary to miseducate their children." But let's not nuance it too much. In one case, he doesn't want anyone fired, not even college faculty members. In an earlier one, fire that fucker.

Oh, the right is, as ever, shit-slickened with hypocrites. John Fund at the National Review (motto: "Massaging our prostates with Buckley's femurs") whined about the "pitchfork persecutors" who targeted Eich for his views. This would be the same John Fund who had no problem with the forced resignation in 2010 of Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod based on things she said (in a ludicrously-edited video), not actions she took.

Even websites with a primary purpose of hounding people into losing their jobs or going insane, Twitchy and Breitbart, have had the balls to get upset about Eich. Seriously, Breitbart, which huffed from James O'Keefe's rancid asshole repeatedly, should feel foolish for saying that "gay activists...destroyed" Eich's career, but that would presume the lampreys who work there feel shame.

The Rude Pundit is of two minds about the whole thing. There's the Andrew Sullivan-ish "This is wrong as a general principle" side. This blog has never shied from defending people who were under attack for their speech, no matter what side they are on, especially when it comes to jokes. (#CancelColbert? Fuckin' seriously?)

But there's another side of the Rude Pundit that's just kind of sick of the shit that we take. We on the left have allowed what we believe to be degraded and dragged through the mud to the point that simply wanting everyone to have health care is equated with terrorism. Yet when the right makes policy out of utterly repellent ideologies, we're supposed to sit back and fight another day. We had to exist for years with "liberal" being a dirty word.

So this side, which is really hard to resist, says, "Fuck you" to the banshees of the right. Yeah, executives in Silicon Valley and people everywhere should be afraid to espouse certain conservative views. "Cut taxes on the wealthy" is one thing. "Climate change isn't proven science" is something totally different. There are dangerously foolish and explicitly harmful things that, if believed, should turn people into pariahs. You believe God shit out the earth in a day? You don't get to have any goddamn role in making economic policy.

We have indulged the children long enough. We have allowed them to run the house, and they have left it filthy and falling apart. Perhaps it's time to give up on our tolerant attempts at convincing them to behave. Perhaps a little punishment is in order.

Oh, dear. You don't think we should act like our opponents? Then content yourself with losing far more battles than you win.

4/04/2014

Look at that motherfucker. That's an eagle with a stars-and-stripes shield and an olive branch and arrows in its claws. It's so goddamned American that you could picture Uncle Sam jacking off to it. That's the Great Seal of the State of Mississippi, which you can read in all caps around the bird. But the governor and the legislature in Mississippi took a gander at that seal and thought, "Well, fuck us. It don't mention 'God.' How's God gonna know we believe everything comes from him if we don't say it?"

So they voted for it, and yesterday Governor Phil Bryant signed a bill that reads, in part, "it shall be the duty of the Secretary of State to procure the seal of this state, the inscription of which shall be, 'THE GREAT SEAL OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI,' around the margin, and in the center an eagle, with the olive branch and quiver of arrows in his claws and below the eagle in the margin shall be the phrase 'IN GOD WE TRUST'." Yeah, "In God We Trust," in all capital letters, crammed in there in under the balls of the eagle.

This way, if God is sitting on the toilet, taking a dump and wondering, "Huh. Does the state of Mississippi trust in me?" an angel secretary can hand him a copy of the state seal. God can look at it and say, "Welp, there it is in capital letters. Guess they do" before wiping his ass with it.

By the way, the bill also was the "Religious Freedom Restoration Act," which allows people to ignore pesky things like state laws if they interfere with their religious beliefs. So no cake for gays, you can assume. The sponsor of the bill, Baptist minister and Senator Phillip Gandy of the toothless yahoo shithole of Waynesboro, said that he hasn't heard of any cases of anyone being forced to violate their religious beliefs by baking gay wedding cakes, but, you know, just in case.

The nutzoid right is thrilled that Bryant didn't punk out and veto it, like that traitor Jan Brewer in Arizona. The signing ceremony was attended by Baptist church lobbyists and Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council (motto: "You're free to believe what we believe and that's about it"). Interestingly, it wasn't attended by anyone who works on issues related to free speech. Or any Muslims, Buddhists, or Jews because why would they. This law wasn't meant for them. In a crowing blog post, Perkins wrote, "There is absolutely no aspect of our lives that should be beyond the guiding light of Scripture."

4/03/2014

1. It's not often that the game is given away so easily as it is in the judgment on the McCutcheon v FEC case at the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts writes, in his plurality opinion overturning aggregate campaign limits on donations to candidates and parties, "In a series of cases over the past 40 years, we have spelled out how to draw the constitutional line between the permissible goal of avoiding corruption in the political process and the impermissible desire simply to limit political speech. We have said that government regulation may not target the general gratitude a candidate may feel toward those who support him or his allies, or the political access such support may afford."

You got that? When Congressman Cashhumper decides to support a bill that says oil companies can murder and crush kittens because it might extract a little natural gas, it's cool, even if Amalgamated Greedy Bastard Oil and Gas donated shit tons of money to the Cashhumper campaign and millions more to sponsor a SuperPAC saying voters should only vote for the kitty-crushing candidate, not Mary Treehugger, who wants to stop you from getting all those blood-soaked jobs. According to the majority in McCutcheon, that's not graft. It's gratitude.

Then Roberts cites a case to support this truly warped, truly fucked-beyond-fucked idea, a precedent that helps with judgment in this case. He cites Citizens United, the truly warped, truly fucked-beyond-fucked decision that ripped the nipple off the baby bottle of campaign cash. Why does Roberts use that case? Because what the fuck else does he have? The McCutcheon decision tosses out other precedents onto the stare decisis dung heap that the Roberts court shits on with regularity. Indeed, Roberts cites Citizens United about a half-dozen times with masturbatory glee, like a toddler showing how he can grab his tiny boner. Except it's all done in the creepy, rationalizing tone of a serial killer explaining why he just has to eat your ear while you watch. Roberts' long game, as others have described it, is to make sure power stays where the powerful want it: with them.

2. The Rude Pundit is pretty sure that Roberts and the majority don't have a reasonable understanding of the word "corruption." The plurality opinion goes out of its way to state that unless someone hands a politician a wad of cash and says, "That is specifically to ensure that you vote for kitten crushing," it ain't corruption. If it ain't quid pro quo, it's cool. Roberts writes, "[W]hile preventing corruption or its appearance is a legitimate objective, Congress may target only a specific type of corruption-'quid pro quo' corruption...The line between quid pro quo corruption and general influence may seem vague at times, but the distinction must be respected in order to safeguard basic First Amendment rights."

Joining Roberts was Justice Antonin "Eyebrows of Doom" Scalia. Scalia went hunting and dined with then-Vice President Dick Cheney after the Supreme Court had accepted a 2004 case to decide whether or not Cheney had to disclose documents from his energy task force meetings. Scalia refused to recuse himself from the case because fuck you. Scalia saw no conflict of interest in palling around with a plaintiff in a case before him. So, yeah, they don't have a fucking clue what corruption is.

3. The second the Supreme Court said, as it did in Citizens United and other cases, that money equals speech, it said that some people have more speech than others. It codified oligarchy. It created a free speech caste system. You can have more speech if you have more money. In fact, in doing so, the court said that, by birth, there are people who have more speech and more ability to gain the gratitude of elected officials. You gotta wonder what the writers of the Constitution would think about that, about the creation of royalty by default. 'Cause, see, the Rude Pundit ain't no Cato Institute "scholar," but he's pretty sure that the Constitution didn't guarantee the chance to have free speech. It guaranteed free speech.

So when Roberts writes, "No matter how desirable it may seem, it is not an acceptable governmental objective to 'level the playing field,' or to 'level electoral opportunities,' or to 'equaliz[e] the financial resources of candidates,'" he is utterly, evilly wrong. Actually, that would specifically be an objective of government because a level playing field is the only way rights for all are guaranteed.

However, there is something Robert wrote that the Rude Pundit does agree with: "[U]nder the dissent's view, it is perfectly fine to contribute $5,200 to nine candidates but somehow corrupt to give the same amount to a tenth." That's not actually what Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the dissent. It was more of a "for fuck's sake, can we have just a slight bit of moderation in our campaign finance laws?" But Roberts is right: it shouldn't be perfectly fine to contribute to nine candidates. It shouldn't be perfectly fine to contribute to any.

4. Clarence Thomas wrote something. Fuck that guy.

5. The solution here is simple: It's time to target wealthy conservatives and their businesses. It's time to use what little speech we have and make their lives as miserable as possible. Whenever they attempt to actually speak with voices instead of money, they should be shouted down. Wherever they go, they should be harassed about their beliefs. We should attempt to boycott their businesses. The Rude Pundit just deleted Firefox. It'd be pretty easy to turn that thing into the next Netscape. They need to be fucked with and fucked with until they're begging for a constitutional amendment to outlaw cash in politics.

There's far more dollars than people in this nation. What else do we have, we of the lesser speech? What do we have but volume and bodies?